All Aboard Russia's Nuclear Weapon Apocalypse Train

A new rail-mounted intercontinental ballistic missile is due to hit Russian railroads in 2020. Russian state media has announced the BZhRK "Barguzin" rail-mounted nuclear missile will begin testing in 2019 and enter service the following year. The scheme is designed to make the country's nuclear arsenal more mobile and thus more difficult to locate in wartime.

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One of the many problems with ICBMs is they are high-priority targets in the event of nuclear war. That is, each belligerent would want to destroy the other's nuclear weapons, and those weapons are sitting ducks if they're stuck in missile silos and the enemy knows where they are. To get around this problem, Russia has chosen to put many of its ICBMs on gigantic wheeled, mobile launchers.

Starting in 2019, Russian strategic forces will continue the shift towards mobile missiles with the new "Barguzin" train-mounted ICBM. Barguzin is the YS-24 "Yars" missile placed on a train-mounted launcher. Yars weighs 54 tons, is just over 60 feet long, and according to Russian sources has a range just over 6,800 miles. Yars is already deployed in underground silos and mobile launchers (see above), and placing it on trains will be the third basing scheme for this new missile.

Map of major Russian railroad lines, although minor lines that Barguzin may run on are not necessarily depicted. Wikipedia photo.

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According to The National Interest, there will be five railroad ICBM regiments, each with a train and six missiles. Each of missile will allegedly carry ten warheads, meaning this modest force of just 30 missiles will pack a total of 300 warheads. In reality the actual number will be slightly smaller, as each missile will likely pack a number of so-called "penetration aids" including dummy warheads and radar jammers instead of live warheads.

Placing so many warheads on a single missile has several advantages. First it's easier to maintain fewer missiles than more. Second, when it comes to nuclear combat, sending ten warheads at once hurtling towards the enemy makes it more difficult to shoot them all down. Russia is worried about America's ballistic missile defense shield deployed in Eastern Europe weakening its ability to target the United States. The missile shield is actually deployed to protect Europe from missiles originating from the Middle East and has no ability to protect the United States, but Russia still plans to counter the system.

The New Start treaty allows both the United States and Russia to maintain a limit of 700 ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles, and bombers, but 1,550 actual warheads. While the treaty has been very useful in negotiating down the number of warheads, missiles and bombers both sides owns, it also encourages each side to pack more than one warhead on each missile to maximize the number of deployed warheads.

Pentagon depiction of RT-23 missile system during the Cold War.

Russia prefers mobile ICBMs. With 6.6 million square miles of territory spread out over 11 time zones, it has plenty of room to hide missiles on the move. During the 1980s, the Soviet Union placed RT-23 "Molodets" missiles on trains, but they were all retired by 2005. The Russian government promises that the Barguzin missiles will be virtually invisible to outside surveillance because they will slip into the Russian railway system and, from the point of view of spy satellites, will be indistinguishable from other railway traffic.

There are problems with a railroad basing system. Commercial railroad tracks go places like major cities, and for security reasons it's best to avoid those places. Second, a railroad ICBM can't leave the rail network, making railroad-mounted missiles much easier to locate than road-mobile missiles. Finally, cutting the railroad lines with a nuclear weapon, or even an explosive charge detonated by a special forces soldier or saboteur, can derail the train or limit its ability to move.

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